SECURITISED ETHNIC IDENTITIES AND

COMMUNAL CONFLICTS:

A Need for Problem-Constructing Conflict Resolution?

TarjaVäyrynen

The paper is inspired by Ernesto Laclau's (1996, p. 46) observation
of the terrain into which history has thrown us. The terrain is characterised
by:

[...] the multiplication of new--and not so new--identities
as a result of the collapse of the places from which the universal subject
spoke--explosion of ethnic and national identities in Eastern Europe and
in the territories of the former USSR, struggles of immigrant groups in
Western Europe, new forms of multicultural protest and self-assertion in
the U.S., to which we have to add the gamut of forms of contestation associated
with the new social movements.

More specifically, the aim of the paper is to discuss why 'violent ethnic
identification' takes place. In other words, it is asked why ethnicity
is seen to be the point of identification in the late modern world and
why it is a source (actual and rhetoric) of violent performances. A tentative
answer is given by studying the features of modernity and the social practices
which are embedded in the modern condition. Furthermore, the question of
conflict resolution is entertained in the paper. Given the nature of modern
practices and agency they produce, it is asked what are the conditions
of conflict resolution, and what is the political space of conflict resolution
in the world of 'ethnic conflict.'

At the center of the question, 'why violent ethnic identification' takes
place, is the question 'why do some identities become securitised,' i.e.
perceived to be threatened in a manner that the way to maintain (or, rather,
'construct') the identity becomes to be seen to be an issue of survival.
In general, issues become securitised when leaders (whether political,
societal, or intellectual) begin to talk about them in terms of existential
threats against some valued referent object. Securitization is, thus, in
essence, an intersubjective establishment of an existential threat with
a saliency sufficient to have substantial political effects requiring emergency
measures outside the normal bounds of political procedure (see Buzan, 1997;
Waever et al., 1993; Neumann, 1997). For example, the process of the break
down of Yugoslavia was a process of securitising collective identities
and of perceiving and expressing the issue of identity in terms of collective
survival.

Furthermore, it needs to be asked why securitised identity leads to
violent performances. It should be noted that violence may have its own
instrumental rationale, i.e. is more than that (see Arendt, 1970). Violence
is also a transformative prcts poles of enactment and reception. Furthermore,
violence can detach itself from initial contexts and become the condition
of its own reproduction. It may become an institution possessing its own
symbolic and performative autonomy as has happened for example, according
to Feldman, in Northern Ireland. Violent performances construe and construct
novel subject positions (1991, p. 21). In other words, they do not arise
from fixed subject positions or from fixed identities (ibid, pp. 20-21).
A 'Tamil Tiger' performing a violent act is not a fixed historical agent
behaving violently. He or she has, rather, a subject position in violent
practices--a position of enactment and reception which is continuously
created and transformed, and which continuously produces his or her identity
as a 'Tamil Tiger.'

The Process of Ethnic Identification in Lebenswelt

In order to understand 'violent ethnic identification' the condition
of human existence needs to be discussed. The study needs, thus, to start
with the description of the structures of the life-world (Lebenswelt) of
social actors and ask whether there is something in these structures which
make ethnic identification particularly important and prone to violence.

Man (the unfortunate English word 'man' refers to both women and men)
is born into a world that existed before her or his birth. This world is
from the outset not merely a physical but also a sociocultural one. The
sociocultural world is a preconstituted and preorganised world whose particular
structure is the result of a historical process and is therefore different
for each culture and society. The social world is experienced by man as
a web of social relationships, of systems, signs, and institutionalised
forms of social organisation (Schutz, 1964, pp. 226-231).

The meaning of the elements of the social world is taken for granted
by those living in the world. There are cultural patterns which are peculiar
to social groups and which function as unquestioned schemes of reference
to members of a group. In Alfred Schutz's words, "any member born or reared
within the group accepts the ready-made standardised scheme of the cultural
pattern handed down to him by ancestors, teachers, and authorities as an
unquestioned and unquestionable guide in all situations which normally
occur within the social world" (1964, p. 49). Being a member of a community
is tantamount to being supplied with guaranteed, 'objective' criteria of
relevance and knowledge which are taken for granted. The criteria of relevance
and knowledge (cultural pattern) give a sense of security and assurance
to those belonging to the social group.

Man approaches the world through typifications. Typifications are fundamentally
intersubjective and are mainly formed by others, such as predecessors or
contemporaries, as appropriate tools for coming to terms with things and
men. They are accepted as such by the group into which man was born. Thus,
the knowledge of typifications and of their appropriate use is an inseparable
element of the sociocultural heritage handed down to the person and stored
to person's 'stock of knowledge.' Knowledge included in the individual
stock is, therefore, largely socially derived, distributed and approved.
(Schutz, 1964, pp. 120-134; Schutz and Luckmann, 1974, pp. 261-262.)

From the point of view of the society, any society considers itself
as a little cosmos, and the maintenance of the cosmos requires symbols
to keep it together. Societies and social groups need their central myths,
or dominating ideologies, to justify and to establish foundations for self-interpretation.
The central myth, as a scheme of self-interpretation, belongs to the relative
natural conception of the world which the in-group takes for granted (Schutz,
1964, pp. 95-104, 113-114, 121, 129, 227, 230, 236, 244-245, 255; Vaitkus,
1991, p. 82).

Ethnicity guides interpretation and action in the social world. It is,
thus, a part of the frame of reference of the social group in terms of
which both the physical as well as sociocultural world is interpreted.
It is an element of the frame of reference which consists of the sum-total
of the various typifications. In other words, ethnicity is a way to typify
the world, others and one-self, and as such it implies roles and ways to
act. As Max Weber argues, the existence of a marriage or a state means
nothing but the mere chance that people will act and will act in a specific
way. Similarly, following Schutz's terminology, the existence of an ethnic
group means nothing but the mere likelihood that people will act in accordance
with the general framework of typifications in which ethnicity, as a reference
to certain criteria of communality (e.g. language, history, 'race'), is
considered to have high relevance.

Although ethnicity can be a part of the relative natural conception
of the world of the social group, it is not a stabile element. On the contrary,
its meaning and content are constantly negotiated in the social interaction
between social actors. In other words, it is continuously negotiated in
encounters which are political and involve power (on the political nature
of human encounters see Arendt 1958, pp. 178-184). As Hanna Arendt notes
on power, it "springs up whenever people get together and act in concert"(1970,
p. 52). Furthermore, ethnicity is employed in order to draw boundaries
as to who belongs to the group and who does not. An ethnic group is about
boundary maintenance; ethnicity is a way to structure interaction which
allows the persistence of differences. Ethnic 'communality' is, therefore,
always an artefact of boundary-drawing activity: always contentious and
contested, glossing over some differentiations and representing some other
differences as powerful and separating factors (Barth, 1969, pp. 9-38;
Bauman, 1992, pp. 677-678; for an example see Roosens, 1989).

There is nothing in the structure of the stock of knowledge and the
logic of typification which gives ethnic identification particular importance.
The meaning and content of ethnicity are constantly negotiated and contested
in the realm of the political arising from human encounters, but that does
not imply 'violent ethnic identification.' Thus the question, what gives
arise to the move from the realm of political to the realm of violence,
remains. It needs to be asked, therefore, why ethnic identities become
securitised in a way that they are perceived to be a threat to the 'survival'
(whatever that term means form the point of view of the actor) to an extent
that violence is assumed to be a suitable means or institution to secure
the identity.

One answer, given from a post-structuralist perspective, claims that
in the (late) modern condition there is a constitutive relationship between
the political and violence. The answer studied in the paper will, by being
post-structurally oriented, also reshape the original question on securitization
and agency involved in the act. Namely, it will shift the emphasis from
an actor 'doing the (speech) act of securitization,' to social practices
which give rise to agencies prone to securitization and violent identification.

The (Late) Modern Condition: Order, Technology and the Production
of Difference

The next step is to assume that our culturally derived, distributed
and approved stocks of knowledge are greatly shaped by modernity and then
to ask whether there is something in the modern content of our stock of
knowledge which relates it particularly to violent ethnic identification.

It should be noted that modernity is a historical period which matured
into a cultural project with the growth of Enlightenment and into a socially
accomplished form of life with the growth of industrial society. One of
the tasks modernity set for itself was to bring order into chaos. Ordered
existence required nature, the unordered, to be mastered, subordinated
and remade to meet 'human needs.' The unordered needed to be held in check,
restrained and contained. The struggle for order is essentially a fight
against ambiguity, ambivalence and fuzziness. Therefore, order is continuously
engaged in the war of survival, the enemy being chaos and chaos being understood
to be pure negativity. In order to be effective, modern mastery requires
(and produces) in its will to design, manipulate and engineer, sovereign
agencies aiming at accomplishing the task (Bauman, 1991, pp. 7-8).

Modernity is also characterised by technology. Technology--in the Heideggerian
sense--is neither the application of science nor does it refer to the mere
instruments we associate with technology. Rather, technology is a mode
of thoughtful being characteristic of the Western metaphysical tradition,
manifest through the way we bring things to presence. Technology has come
to fruition in modern times in the form of calculative and instrumental
reasoning which characterises modern rationality. Instrumental reasoning
brings things into presence as calculable matter and helps order them.
By enframing things in a certain manner, technology holds them readily
available, in effect, as a kind of objectivised and homogenised form. Things
are, thus, standing in reserve to be employed and re-deployed in continuous
exercise of instrumentally propelled production and consumption (Campbell
and Dillon, 1993, pp. 20-24).

Therefore, technology is a mode of thought which is also a mode of practice,
a way of being in the world. We do not have technology, technology has
us. By being a mode of thought, technology relates to political and social
life too. As Heidegger argues, all aspects of modern life are becoming,
or have become, determined technologically. In other words, political and
social life are largely technologised. In short, the mode of enframing
the world conditioned by technology prevails also in the spheres of political
and social life, not only in the sphere of our relationship to nature (Ibid.)

It is naturally worth entertaining the question whether the 'world society'
is, in its totality, characterised by technology or whether there are pockets
which have escaped it. If there are such 'unmodern islands,' the characteristics
suggested below do not apply to them. One way to answer the question is
to claim that the universal 'civilising' and 'modernising' project of European
imperialist expansion has reached all parts of the world, evidenced by
the resistance arising out of other cultures.

Another, and clearly more profound. way to answer the question is to
reveal the assumption underlying it. Namely, the assumption concerning
'otherness.' The question itself supposes 'the other' which is subtly nativized,
placed in a separate frame of analysis and spatially located in that 'other
place' which is proper to an 'other culture.' The unity of 'us' (modern
West) and the otherness of the 'other' (unmodern pocket) is not questioned.
The assumption that there are 'unmodern people' does not tackle the core
issue, namely, the processes of the production of difference (us/other)
in the world of culturally, socially and economically interconnected and
interdependent spaces. (see Gupta and Ferguson, 1992, pp. 6-23)

The issue is present in Marjorie Shostak's Nisa: The Life and Words
of a !Kung Woman and Edwin Wilmsen's critique of it. Shostak portrays
!Kung people in the Kalahari (also known as 'Bushmen') desert as almost
living on another planet ('in an isolated unmodern pocket') isolated from
the outside world and, therefore, bound to be traditional and racially
distinct. She assumes the existence of 'the other' in 'other place' as
a starting-point for her inquiry. Wilmsen, on the other hand, starts his
Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari by asking
how 'the Bushmen' came to be Bushmen. He demonstrates that San-speaking
people have been in continuous interaction with other groups for as long
as we have evidence for, and that political and economical relations linked
the supposedly isolated desert with a regional political economy both in
the colonial and precolonial era. Moreover, the 'Bushman/San' label is
a category which was produced through the retribalization of the colonial
period just half a century ago. (ibid., pp. 14-17)

We are, therefore, not dealing with 'authentic' !Kung society. Rather,
we are dealing with an 'imagined community' (Anderson, 1983) whose production
has taken place in the conjunctures of global economics, politics and culture.
Thus, the foundational question, 'how difference is produced,' and not
supposing the 'otherness of the other,' gives a totally new account of
and perspective to the assumed political, economical and cultural isolation.
Furthermore, it forces us to explore the contexts in which the production
of the 'otherness' is embedded. The following section outlines some of
the contexts or, rather, spaces or 'landscapes' as Arjun Appadurai (1990)
calls them.

Global Economical, Political and Cultural Practices and Spaces

Since technology conditions the way we are in the world by forming a
part of the content of our stock of knowledge, the question arises concerning
what kind of social and political practices can emerge within the framework
created by technology. Seen from the angle of ethnic conflict, four social
and political practices are especially important: the sovereign territorial
state, globalisation, capitalism and media practices. All these create
an 'identity space' in which ethnic identification and the production of
difference takes place. In short, they are social practices which shape
local ethnic identification and produce parochial 'ethnic subjects.'

The sovereign territorial state and its assumed coexistence with the
nation is of a vital importance in understanding ethnicity, because it
is space within which ethnic identification--and especially violent identification
-- often actualises. The sovereign state has traditionally tried to offer
the instrumental solution for the challenge set forth by different forms
of identity politics (e.g. class, gender and ethnic claims). In other words,
the state has aimed at providing a shared domain of meaning for groups
located within its sovereign control and territory. The state, as a social
and political practice and as a system of inclusion and exclusion par
excellence, has tried to solve the problem of conflicting identity
claims by producing precise distinctions and differences between citizens
and aliens, by domesticating particular identities and by creating a coherent
sovereign identity (for the sovereign state see e.g. Ashley, 1989; Bauman,
1992; Campbell 1993; Linklater, 1990; Linklater, 1994; Walker, 1993 and,
for example, 'imagining' India Krishna, 1996).

As Bauman describes the modern state:

National states promote 'nativism' and construe its subjects
as 'natives.' They laud and enforce the ethnic, religious, linguistic,
cultural homogeneity. They are engaged in incessant propaganda of
shared attitudes. They construct joint historical memories
and do their best to discredit or suppress such stubborn memories that
cannot be squeezed into a shared tradition--now redefined in the state-appropriate
quasi-legal terms, as 'our common heritage.' They preach the sense of common
mission, common fate, common destiny. They breed, or at least
legitimize and give tacit support to, animosity towards everyone standing
outside the holy union" (1991, p. 64) [emphasis by Bauman].

This state has become more and more contested space. As Appadurai notes,
the 'nation-state' is a battle of imagination with 'state and nation seeking
to cannibalise each other.'(1990, p. 304) Groups with ideas about nationhood
seek to capture or co-opt states power, and states simultaneously seek
to capture and monopolise ideas about nationhood. Here is, thus, a platform
for separatism and micro-identities to become political projects within
nation-states. Ideas of nationhood appear to be steadily increasing in
scale and regularly crossing existing state boundaries. Kurds, Sikhs, Tamils,
Sri Lankans, and Quebecois represent 'imagined communities' which seek
to create states of their own or carve pieces out of existing states. States,
on the other hand, are seeking to establish the monopoly of producing distinctions
and differences -- a task in which they are never fully successful. From
the perspective of the 'nation-state,' an ethnic group claiming a right
to produce difference and make distinctions which transcend the official
state ideology is an 'enemy within.' Globalisation as social practice is
also embedded in technology and in its instrumental rationale. Globalisation
implies accelerated processes, growth of global institutions and increased
flows of information. It is closely connected with global capitalism, which
is in an interesting contradiction with the maintenance of states and sovereignty
for the political organisation of international relations. Capital flows
across national borders and is, thus, multinational and transnational by
nature. Capitol creates and operates in 'finanscape' with fast moving currency
markets, national stock exchanges and commodity speculations (Appadurai,
1990, p.298).

Global capitalism produces, with growing internationalisation of production
and finance, global divisions of labour. The global division of labour
has its local counterpart, namely, the segmenting of labour forces along
'race' and 'ethnic' lines. As Jindy Pettman notes, "the increasingly global
economy shapes the new international division of labour along state, national,
racialized, ethnicized, and gender divides" (1996, p. 264). The international
political economy of, for example, migrant labour is a part of this division,
and a motive of huge population movements (Shapiro, 1996, p. 259, for examples
see Pettman, 1996; Soguk, 1996).

The movement of bodies, for whatever reason and among other global flows
, deterritorialises the world assumed to be divided along territorial lines
by shifting labouring populations from poor societies into relatively wealthy
societies. Deterritorialisation creates a version of 'ethnoscape' (term
Appadurai's) which sometimes has an exaggerated and intensified sense of
criticism or attachment to the politics of the home-state. In other words,
identity-building becomes deterritorialised and assumes an increasingly
symbolic character in a nomadic world. According to Appadurai, deterritorialisation,
whether of Hindus, Sikhs, Palestinians or Ukrainians, is now at the core
of a variety of global fundamentalism (1990, p. 301) Invented homelands
can become fantastic and one-sided to the extent that they provide material
for new 'ideoscapes' (concentrations of images which have often to do with
ideologies of states and their counter-ideologies) in which ethnic conflict
can begin to erupt. The search for identity is, therefore, at its most
intense when identity is located in the not-yet-accomplished future. An
intense search for identity takes place, for example, in the West Bank,
Beirut, Jaffna and 'Kurdistan.' They are global/local stages where bloody
scenes between existing nation-states and deterritorialised groupings are
acted (Appadurai, 1990; Bauman, 1992).

The media contributes to ethnic identification as well as to the creation
of assumed unified nation-states. As suggested above, ethnic identification
consists often of an utopia as a construction of the future state of affairs
in which all differences are reconciled around an unified body politic.
The media works towards this utopia by producing networks of signs and
images representing 'oneness' and 'otherness.' 'Mediascapes' provide large
and complex repertoires of images, narratives, and 'ethnoscapes' to viewers
throughout the world. They help to constitute narratives of the 'other'
and proto-narratives of possible lives which can produce a platform for
the desire for acquisition and movement. Furthermore, media helps groups
spread over vast and irregular spaces stay linked together and create political
sentiments based on intimacy and locality (Appadurai, 1990; Schulte-Sasse
& Schulte-Sasse, 1991).

Deterritorialisation and dislocation of peoples, thus, does not remove
the need for overcoming separation. Rather, it often enforces the search
for unity. Aesthetic experiences of community which allow experiences of
unity or community become more and more important when "the self seeks
to overcome its separation and the extreme differentiation of modern societies
by mirroring itself in signs that facilitate the illusion that the very
difference that establishes the sign is overcome in the experience of the
sign" (Schulte-Sasse & Schulte-Sasse, 1991, p. 78). For example, a
state flag is a sign which stems from sovereign state as social practice
establishing differences between citizens and aliens. In other words, differences
are constitutive of the sign. On the other hand, the experience of the
sign gives an illusory experience of national unity and even a community
of citizens which overcomes obvious 'internal' differences.

In sum, these global processes, 'landscapes' in Appadurai's words, affect
social and political experiences by creating identity space within which
social and political agencies are situated and within which ethnic identification
takes place. The next section examines the constitutive nature of social
practices for political agency and identification.

Political Agency and Security

Social and political agency (subject) is embedded in social practices.
In Feldman's words: "Political agency is not given but achieved on the
basis of practices that alter the subject" (1991, p. 1) Political agency
is relational--it has no fixed grounds--it is the effect of situated practices."
In other words, subject becomes articulated through social practice. Agency
is not embedded only in language, but in relational sequences of action.
The cultural construction of the political subject is tied to the cultural
construction of history. Political agency is the factored product of multiple
subject positions; there is no guarantee of a unified subject, as actors
shift from one transactional space to another. Agency is not the author,
but the product of doing, and, therefore, formed by a web of subject positions
during that doing. It follows that power is embedded in the situated practices
of agents: it is neither a resource nor a capacity (Feldman, 1991, pp.
1-5).

What is characteristic to modernity is the shift of man from object
to subject positions: to the positions where subject has its own verities
and laws. The death of the Subject (with a capital S) has produced a variety
of new subject positions, and the production of new subject positions has
accelerated in late modernity. The dynamic of 'subjectivation' expands
the categories of who or what can be a political subject. As Ernesto Laclau
argues, the multiplication of new identities as a result of the collapse
of the places from which the universal subject spoke has produced the explosion
of, for example, ethnic and nationalistic identities and, therefore, the
sites of political mobilisation seem to appear in unexpected places (Feldman,
1991, pp. 1-16; Laclau, 1996, p. 46).

David Campbell and Michael Dillon argue that violence has become the
ultima ratio of (late) modern politics, because 'subjectivation'
has liberated political understanding and framed the world in a 'technological'
and instrumental manner. The basic political subject is violent by virtue
of its very composition (1993, pp. 1-47). According to Campbell and Dillon,
security is the foundational value around which the political subject revolves.
Security is not merely the main goal of the political subject of violence,
it is, rather, the very principle of formation of that political subject.
The political subject of violence, invoking constantly security, comes
in a variety of forms: God, rational subject, nation, state, people, class,
race, etc.

Thus, what Campbell and Dillon seem to be arguing is that security and
the securitization of an identity is not a question of a conscious decision
of an already existing political subject as Buzan seems to think. Rather,
security is constitutive of political subject, because of the 'technological'
framing of the world modernity offers. Social practices, and agency embedded
in them, are fundamentally, in Campbell's and Dillon's account, organised
around and constituted by security. In a similar vein, Bauman argues that
modern 'consciousness' warns and alerts in its will to control and engineer
assumed chaos. Campbell's and Dillon's view of security can be, thus, seen
to imply that the 'ethnic subject' embedded in global practices ('landscapes'
and their conjunctures) is bound to securitise identities and even to seek
for violent ethnic identification due to its composition (1991, p. 9).

Violent Political Identification

Since security comes also in the form of ethnic groups, the modern condition
characterised by dislocation and a variety of forms of alienation works
for the processes of violent ethnic identification and the securitization
of ethnic identities. 'Identification' can be best understood in the light
of Lacanian theory, and especially from the angle of void in identification.

Accoy of identification, one needs to identify with something, because
there is an original and insurmountable lack of identity. The lack is,
thus, truly constitutive of any identity (see Laclau and Zac, 1994, pp.
11-39). A vital point from the point of view of 'violent ethnic identification'
needs to be noted: the failure in fully constituting any identity. There
is always a void in identification, which is open to distortions and excesses
and which produces anxiety and uncertainty. The failure of full identification,
therefore, triggers new acts of identification which aim at mastering the
disturbing effects.

How does identification, then, relate to securitised identity? The social
world presents itself to us, as argued earlier, largely as a sedimented
ensemble of social practices accepted at face value. We seldom question
the founding acts of their institution in our life-world. However, modern
and especially late modern conditions are characterised by increasing awareness
of the political character embedded in the institutions of all social identity.
The foundation of institutions and practices are put more and more into
question in the world of 'subjectivation.' In short, the collapse of the
Subject and emerging new subject positions allow the questioning of social
practices. According to Laclau, the less the sedimented social practices
are able to ensure social reproduction, the more new acts of political
intervention and identification are socially required (1994, pp. 3-4).
This leads, as Laclau argues, to politicization (and securitization) of
social identities as well as proliferation of particularistic political
identities.

The opening up of new subject positions in the late modern condition,
facilitated by deterritorialisation and dislocation of people, enable the
questioning the political foundations of social institutions. Political
and social practices and institutions are essentially contingent and, thus,
open to contestation, and therefore antagonism. Especially in a time of
rapid change when new forms of life emerge too fast to be absorbed and
domesticated by the old mechanisms of control and mental frames, new subject
positions arise which enable, in Bauman's words, the lifting of "identity
to the level of awareness, making it into a task" (1992, p. 680). An attempt
to complete the task of identity-making is pursued through imagining of
communities; imaging of communities which are founded on securitised and
exclusive identities

'Ethnocraft' (the term is derived from Richard Ashley's discussion on
statecraft, see Ashley, 1989, pp. 301-309) which works at the local level,
but in the conjunctures of global practices, finalises the processes of
shaping and securitising identities. It is the knowledgeable practice by
which ethnic communities of men are differentiated in space and time. Ethnocraft
is a practice of enframing through which boundaries between the in-group
and out-group are created and controlled, ambiguities in the order of the
domains of relevance solved and, on the other hand, difference marked between
man and ethnic community and the dangerous fields outside the group. The
practices of ethnocraft work primarily, not by solving problems and dangers
in the name of the ethnic population, but by inscribing problems and dangers
that can be taken to be exterior to the community. As Richard Ashley claims,
without the inscription of external dangers, there could be no well-bounded
social identities (1989, p. 305). The practices of ethnocraft work to constitute
a coherent and sovereign identity for the ethnic group, securitise that
identity and rhetorically legitimise violent performances in the name of
survival. Hence, violent ethnic identification has a promising seedbed
to grow.

Foundations for Conflict Resolution:

Void in Identification and Dialogical Social Practices

It should be noted that ethnic conflict or violent ethnic identification
does not stop the process of identification. In other words, identification
continues through and in conflict, as argued earlier. However, conflict
situation narratives on ethnicity (e.g. ethnic origin, group memberships)
tend to become fixed, and this is often wrongly seen to imply fixed identities.
Ethnic narratives in conflict situations do seal off alternative ways to
typify the world (see Cobb, 1994, pp. 54-56). They seal off alternative
interpretations which could destabilise the dominant interpretations. Ethnic
narratives seal off, for example, alternative self-definitions of the group
and therewith exclude alternative identifications, roles and modes of action.
In the conflict situation, ethnic narratives, thus, become rigid and readily
reenacted. However, as Sara Cobb notes, "narrative closure is never complete
and contestation is inevitable", for example, "in mediation as disputants
refute, deny, and elaborate the discursive context in which they are located
by self and other" (1994, p. 56).

Neither does any political and social practice fully totalise society.
There is always excess in both social practice and the identification space
it creates. As the Lacanian theory states, every signifier fails to represent
the subject and leaves, therefore, a residue. According to Aoki's reading
of Lacan, linguistic disruption (present in metaphors and metonyms) 'determines
the indeterminacy of the subject' (1995, p. 49) Excess leaves a residue
on basis of which a continuous constitution of identity takes place. Similarly,
the social world is not entirely defined in terms of repetitive and sedimented
practices, because the social always overflows the institutionalised frameworks.
It follows, that the fullness of society in which the subject finds its
true identity is never finally achieved. Thus, a dimension of construction
and creation is inherent in all social practice - even despite the modern
technological enframing of the world. This constructive moment which exceeds
the sedimented social practice creates a space for innovation (Feldman,
1991, p. 5; Laclau, 1994, p. 3; more on Lacan's symbolic order and its
indeterminacy see Aoki, 1995).

The void created by excess and the lack of full narrative closure should
be employed by conflict resolution practices. The void in identification,
the 'unfinished' political subjects it creates, the failure of any social
practice fully totalise a society and the openness of all narratives, bring
about space in which conflict resolution can produce change. It should
be emphasised that conflict resolution is a social and political practice
among other practices in which political agency, and subject is located.
Conflict resolution can create new identification and political sphere
only if it is based on the creation of 'alternative' social practices
and therewith new political subject.

One possible way to create new practice is by producing discursive/dialogic
institutions and communities as alternative to instrumental institutions
(see Benhabib, 1992; Gadamer, 1991; Bakhtin, 1986). The dialogic community:

[...] anticipates non-violent strategies of conflict resolution
as well as encouraging cooperative and associative methods of problem-solving.
It is a matter of political imagination as well as collective fantasy to
project institutions, practices and ways of life which promote non-violent
conflict resolution strategies and associative problem-solving methods
(Benhabib, 1992, p. 49).

The dialogic community is a moral conversation in which the capacity to
reverse perspectives, that is, the willingness to reason from other's point
of view and the sensitivity to hear their voice, is paramount. The dialogic
community in which dialogic relations are established is, thus, broader
than dialogic speech in the narrow sense of the word. The aim of dialogue
is not consensus or unanimity, but the "anticipated communication with
others whom I know I must finally come to some agreement" (Benhabib, 1992,
p. 9). In such a conversation, which is called by Benhabib also 'enlarged
thinking,' the identity of the moral self becomes reconceptualised by virtue
of the nature of community.

Since there are no standpoints which are not dependent upon socially
produced, shared and approved ways to typify the world and subject positions,
the aim of the establishment of the dialogic community cannot be the finding
of a set of universal moral principles, values or reason. Rather, the emphasis
should be on "sustaining those normative practices and moral relationships
within which reasoned agreement as a way of life can flourish and continue"
(Benhabib, 1992, p. 38). An inability to come to a shared understanding
is not a final outcome, but indicates that one has been unable to bring
the process of understanding to a conclusion. Dialogue is, by its nature,
repeatable and, by being repeated, it can be moved forward.

It should be noted, that official and formal negotiations seldom bring
about a dialogic framework, for they aim at reaching agreement on an exchange
or on the realisation of a common interest in the context created by technology.
Negotiations which rely solely on instrumental bargaining on interests--or
rather, interests turned into utilities--do not produce 'new subjects'
or new points of identification. Neither does the bargaining structure
with the manipulative (biased) mediator generate the dialogic community,
because the biased third party operates in a context of power politics
and, therefore, in a context of cost-benefit calculations. Official negotiations
and biased mediation tend to re-enforce ethnic structures by appealing
to a limited set of negotiable interests and utilities which necessitates
the existence of an assumed coherent and sovereign identity; they necessitate
agency entitled to resort instrumental reason and institutions.

Campbell, D. and M. Dillon 1993. "The End of Philosophy and the End
of International Realtions." In D. Campbell and M. (Eds.) The Political
Subject of Violence. Manchester and New York: Manchester University
Press, pp. 1-47.

Laclau, E. 1994. "Introduction." In E. Laclau (ed.) The Making of
Political Identities. London, New York: Verso, pp. 1-10.

--------. 1996. "Universalism, Particularism, and the Question of Identity."
In E. Wilmsen and P. McAllister (eds.) The Politics of Difference.
Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, pp. 45-58.

Laclau, E. and L. Zac 1994. "Minding the Gap: The Subject of Politics."
In E. Laclau (ed.) The Making of Political Identities. London, New
York: Verso, pp. 11-39.

Linklater, A. 1990. Men and Citizens in the Theory of International
Relations. London: Macmillan

--------. 1994. "Dialogue, Dialectic and Emancipation in International
Relations at the End of the Post-War Age." Millennium: Journal of International
Studies, 23(1).

Neumann, I. B. 1997. "Identity and the Outbreak of War, or Why the Copenhagen
School of Security Studies Should Include the Idea of 'Violisation' in
Its Framework of Analysis." Paper presented at the COPRI Symposium on 'Intra
State Conflict: Causes and Peace Strategies,' Copenhagen, 3-4 May.

Vaitkus, S. 1991. How Is Society Possible? Intersubjectivity and
the Fiduciary Attitude as Problems of the Social Group in Mead, Gurwitsch,
and Schutz. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.